- Argentina was crowned the Qatar 2022 World Cup champion, on Sunday, after defeating France on penalties (4-2) in an exciting final, whose original and extra time ended in a positive draw with three goals for each team.
The beginning of the match was Argentine par excellence, as coach Lionel Scaloni relied on playing with three in the front line, led by Lionel Messi with Julian Alvarez and Angel Di Maria, who was the connecting point with the middle and the starting point in every attack.
The spread and control of the Argentine national team became more evident after the first ten minutes, which did not witness any French presence at all, with Didier Deschamps resorting to giving the opponent the ball and giving him the opportunity to attack in the hope of exploiting the back spaces to strike with counterattacks led by Kylian Mbappe and Osman Dembele on the sides.
Di Maria, who lit the left side, brilliantly penetrated France’s defenses and then bypassed Dembele before the latter impeded him inside the forbidden area, so that the referee awarded a penalty kick that Lionel Messi translated into a first goal in the 21st minute.
The reaction of the French national team was expected by rushing forward in an effort to adjust, so that Deschamps fell into the trap that was designed to implement it and gave Argentina the opportunity to counterattack with attacks, one of which resulted in a second goal that the brilliant Di Maria fell on in the 36th minute after a pass from McAllister.
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After the goal, the French coach tried to adjust the bad form in which the “roosters” appeared with two successive changes, with which he inserted Randall Colo and Marcus Thuram, instead of Dembley and Olivier Giroud, which activated a little the front line, but without making any tangible change, so that the first half ended with a deserved progress. for the Argentina national team.
After the break, the advantage continued for Argentina, amidst the great brilliance of French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who was brave and was the main reason why his country did not suffer a heavy result by stopping two dangerous balls from De Paul and Alvarez.
The first real threat to the Argentine goal, the French waited until the 70th minute to watch it from a powerful ball that Mbappe hit, just over the horizontal bar.
In the 79th minute, Randall Colo slipped in the midst of negligence from the Argentine defense, which prompted Otamendi to commit a mistake inside the area, after which the referee announced the existence of a penalty kick, from which Mbappe reduced the difference with the first goal for the French.
The excitement reached its peak after only two minutes, when Mbappe was able again to visit Emiliano Martinez’s net with a beautiful second goal, which gave him a tie to the defending champion in a scenario that occurs for the first time in 36 years, when Argentina advanced in the 1986 World Cup final against Germany with two goals before the latter returned and adjusted the score, not The title eventually went to the Tango team (3-2).
The remaining minutes passed quickly without anything new, so the match went to overtime, where the second of them was marked by Messi scoring the goal to restore the lead in the 108th minute, after a quick counterattack that was nullified by Lloris on the first occasion before Lionel followed the ball into the net.
The pride of the defending champion refused to surrender to defeat, and Mbappe rushed with his comrades with all their offensive weight, which resulted in a new penalty kick, which Mbappe successfully executed, equalizing in the 118th minute.
In the penalty shootout, the tango dancers excelled after they succeeded in scoring 4 kicks to two for France, which was stripped of its title and failed to be the third team to retain the title after Italy and Brazil.
The title is the third for Argentina, which won the World Cup for the first time in the 1978 World Cup on its soil by defeating the Netherlands with three goals to one, and then won it under the leadership of Diego Armando Maradona in 1986 at the expense of Germany.